


the consequences of being

by the_hodag



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Future Fic, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, guitar fueled angst, patrick is feeling some type of way and david doesnt know what to do about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:49:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25498627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_hodag/pseuds/the_hodag
Summary: David's never been very good at having difficult conversations. But for Patrick, he has to try.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 33
Kudos: 146





	the consequences of being

**Author's Note:**

> just a big thanks to [swat117](https://archiveofourown.org/users/swat117) for being a good beta and dealing with my general shenanigans

The house has been quiet lately. That’s the only indication that something’s wrong. 

David almost forgets that it’s even an issue sometimes, with the way his husband carries himself as though everything is alright, all smiles and I-love-yous as he pulls David in for a goodnight kiss. There are days that it feels like they’re in their thirties again, relatively unscathed by the cruelty of time.

But the house has been quiet lately, and its silent hallways are plagued with reminders of the invincible men they were before the dust settled and they were left with a laundry list of limitations. 

David blinks at himself in the bathroom mirror. He likes the streaks of gray in his hair. He didn’t at first because it reminded him too much of his father, but Patrick knew the correct buttons to push in order to change David’s mind. _Distinguished. Silver fox._ Those were the words Patrick had used over and over again until it had become a mantra David repeats every time he sees his reflection. 

He wishes he could invent a mantra for Patrick to use. Nothing comes to mind. 

Without warning, the silence is invaded by the plucking of guitar strings, a gentle melody drifting from a distant room. David sighs, flicks off the bathroom light and treads slowly down the hall to the door at the end, waiting and listening as chord after tentative chord drifts through the crack. It’s a song David recognizes but can’t remember the name of.

It doesn’t sound right. There are missing notes and the rhythm falls behind with every shifting chord. Then the music stops abruptly, bookended with a mumbled swear and a discordant scrape of strings.

David presses his palm against the door. It swings forward with a light squeak as he pokes his head in between the crack. “Hey, is everything okay?” 

David knows the answer he wants is the one Patrick won’t give. He wonders why he even asked in the first place. 

“Yeah, everything is...” The guitar sits uncomfortably in Patrick’s lap, a rosewood shield against David’s consternation. Patrick refuses to see him. His eyes are lost in the steel strings, his right hand gripping the wrist of his left as his fingers open and close and open again. “Just fine. It’s fine.” 

“Well...it sounded fine.”

When Patrick finally looks at David, he looks _through_ him. David feels like a ghost, watching helplessly from across the void as the man he loves falls to pieces on a weathered mahogany stool. “You’re a bad liar, David,” Patrick says, his words accompanied by a disbelieving chuckle that is more painful than joyous. 

“I’m not lying, I…” 

The sentence trails off. Coherent thoughts have never been David’s forte. His head is a mess of stray observations and undefined emotions deeply enmeshed in a web of insecurity that has taken a millennia to untangle. 

“Okay, I’m lying,” he admits, because excising the bullshit is what Patrick would do if he were the one standing in the door. Because until now, Patrick had _always_ been the one standing in the door. 

David burns the web, sifts through the ashes with a newfound determination in search of a moment of clarity. He has to be the one to bear the confidence, for Patrick’s sake. If they both fall now, they will fall forever, and then what would remain to sift through?

He makes his way to the piano against the wall, yanks the bench from its hollow and drags it to the center of the room with Patrick watching his every move. David sits down and unceremoniously tears the guitar from Patrick’s lap before his husband can protest.

“H—”

“Shh,” David demands as he occupies the empty chair, pressing the guitar against his chest. “Isn’t this thing supposed to have a strap?”

“In there,” Patrick tells him with a nod to the open black case settled on the floor beside his feet, where the braided strap rests in a dignified spool. 

The last time David held a guitar had been a year or two ago, before he’d decided that he lacked the patience to master it and shelved any desire he thought he had; but he still retains a few of the chord shapes that Patrick had shown him, and can even recall a couple progressions with perfect clarity.

The guitar feels fragile, like a gentle breeze could drift through the open window and splinter the frame into a thousand pieces. David holds its neck tighter than he knows he should, knuckles white against the dark wood as he plucks a string.

“I am going to... _attempt_...to play a song, and you’re going to correct my mistakes,” David urges, trying his hardest to sound aloof, blissfully unaware. “I know how much you love to tell me when I’m wrong, so...” 

The grip on Patrick’s wrist relaxes slightly, but his eyes flash with an emotion David can’t put a name to. “You have it backwards.”

“That’s—” David doesn’t look down before he flips the guitar. “I knew that.”

“That was actually a joke, David? But the fact you didn’t realize that doesn’t bode well for this spontaneous lesson,” Patrick says in a tone that suggests he still retains his playful nature, in spite of himself. It’s a fleeting moment of victory in David’s eyes, but he musters a glare as he flips the guitar to the correct position. 

“It’s possible that I may have had a slight lapse in judgement.”

“Whatever you need to say to get yourself through this trying time,” Patrick says and David hates it. He hates that his husband wears a fabricated smile and speaks with a sugary cadence that could fool a lie detector. But despite popular belief, David isn’t a cold and unfeeling machine. He has the benefit of twenty years of marriage and a lifetime’s worth of pretension to remain thoroughly unconvinced. 

“The only thing that’s trying right now is my patience,” David responds. 

A sense of foreboding washes over him as he studies the fretboard. When David tentatively strums the chords he barely remembers, Patrick’s gaze falls to the floor in recognition. David can tell that he’s lost in the early years of their marriage, when intrinsic pride nearly caused their mutually assured destruction, when David had been too stubborn to admit that he needed help and Patrick had been too stubborn to admit that he didn’t know _how_. 

David watches the way Patrick flexes his hand. History has a funny way of repeating itself.

“You’re forgetting the E Minor in the chorus.” 

“Right, and...how do I play that one?”

“It’s an E Major without the G string.”

“Ooh, you should’ve warned me that this was going to get sexy.”

“Just give me the guitar before you hurt yourself.” Patrick leans forward to wrench the guitar free from David’s clutches. He resettles it against his knee and holds it there.

And he holds it there.

David waits in silence until Patrick presses down on the frets carefully as though he were dismantling a bomb, a deadly explosion ticking away beneath the strings. Yet, the notes that resonate through the room are clean, crisp, and safe. There’s a glimpse of relief in the way Patrick closes his eyes and lets muscle memory guide him. 

He hums along at a volume David can barely hear. It almost sounds like a prayer.

Then Patrick makes a mistake, and he can’t shield himself from the blast. His left hand slips and the notes come out in muted plunks. Before David can blink, Patrick abandons the guitar to the depths of its case and leans forward on his knees, his head disappearing into his hands. 

“I can’t fucking do this anymore, David.”

“Then why are you trying so hard to prove that you can?” David asks, because he knows it’s time to have the conversation they’ve been dancing around for months. His head is spinning a million miles a minute but he steadies himself with the weight in his heart, hands clasping tightly in the folds of his sweater. He knows that this discomfort is nothing compared to what Patrick is feeling, but letting his own self go is easier said than done.

“Because it’s _me_ , David.”

And there it is. The admission that David was afraid of. Patrick feels like he’s losing his identity.

He’d once explained to David that music made his emotions tangible. When words were too difficult to speak, Patrick would play them instead. Open mic nights, and wedding vows, and embarrassing sing-alongs of the _Golden Girls_ theme—he had been the maestro, conducting the soundtrack of their life with a flick of his wrist. Then the doctor had advised him to take it easy, and Patrick had taken it hard. 

“When this started happening,” David starts, waving his hand along the length of his face. “I felt like I was watching myself being slowly eaten alive. And because I’m spectacularly melodramatic and always have been, I assumed that the world would replace me with a marginally less attractive 20-something who didn’t know the difference between qiviut and mohair.” 

Patrick chuckles halfheartedly. 

“But. In the midst of my hysteria, you were the only one who managed to convince me otherwise. You said: ‘I’m still here.’ Now I am _uncharacteristically_ obligated to return the favor and tell you that...it’s okay that you can’t play music anymore. Well, it—it’s _not_ okay, but it _is_. If all I wanted from a relationship was someone particularly dextrous, then I would’ve married that sign language interpreter who moonlighted as a ventriloquist back in 2006. I married you instead. And...even though I wanted to believe that we would be young forever, I knew that there would come a time where we would have to suffer the consequences of growing old.”

“I guess that time is now.”

“It is. But I’m still here,” David says, reaching out to pull Patrick’s hand into his. The ring on his finger gleams in the sunlight as David traces the lines along the length of his palm. “And you are too.” 

In the silence between them, Patrick’s eyes speak of a thousand memories. They flicker with trepidation as his lips open and close and open again. “Can I ask you kind of a morbid question then? As long as we’re being brutally honest with each other.” 

“Yes! Finally! I was wondering when things would get sexy.” 

“Do you ever wonder which...well, which one of us will be the first to go?” 

The question gives David pause. “Go?”

“Sorry, it was a stupid question—I guess I’m just in a ‘wallow in despair’ kind of mood.”

“Well, don’t do _that_. Only _I’m_ allowed to wallow, and I do enough of it for the both of us.”

Patrick looks serious. “At least humor me for a second.”

“No,” David says.

“No, you don’t wonder about it, or no, you don’t want to humor me?”

“Just...no.” 

David doesn’t let himself see Patrick in that moment. He’s too afraid that disappointment might be settling into the lines of his husband’s face, but the weight in his heart grows heavier at the thought that Patrick might instead display lines full of understanding. The breeze that drifts through the open window feels like shards of ice against David’s skin. 

“Okay,” David allows himself to say. Because the guilt would eat him alive if he said nothing at all. “Best case scenario? We die in a plane crash, and then neither of us will ever have to deal with it.” 

“Here’s hoping,” Patrick agrees. His smile is genuine for the first time in weeks as he twines his fingers with David’s, pulling David’s hand up to his lips. David returns the smile and for a moment, it feels like the last twenty years never happened.

They are each other’s constants. David understands that now. Does Patrick?

“Can we agree that the energy in this room is a little too _Six Feet Under_ series finale right now? It might be a good idea to just…” David reluctantly lets go of his husband to gently shut the lid of the guitar case. “Close this up for the day.”

“Probably a good idea.”

“I do have those sometimes.”

**Author's Note:**

> also a MAJOR shout out to my cat who blessed this fic with several random strings of letters and numbers and even a parentheses at one point. she is truly a litterary genius.


End file.
